


i'll only lie down by the waterside

by voodoochild



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: F/M, Hate Sex, Infidelity, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esther Randolph likes her men a little dumb and a little dangerous. Eli Thompson fits the bill nicely. (Spoilers for 2.12.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll only lie down by the waterside

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Boardwalk Empire Comment Ficathon](cloudytea.livejournal.com/139537.html), for the prompt _"garden wall of eden/full of spiderbites on all your lovers/we were born to fuck each other one way or another"_. Title from Iron and Wine's "Evening On the Ground".

She comes to see him a few days after the mistrial.

It's a mistake - god, is it ever a mistake, with his wife at the door glaring daggers at her, baby perched on her hip - but she comes anyway. He pours her a coffee, and sits with her out on the front porch, as if they're friends.

"There a reason you wanted to see me, Ms. Randolph?"

She has lived her life around men who can wield words like swords: sharp, pointed, designed to slip between your ribs and spill blood. Elias Thompson wields words like a blunt instrument - clubbing, brutal, almost as if he doesn't know what he's swinging at, just that he hits _something_.

It's surprisingly attractive.

"This isn't an apology," Esther says, abruptly. "I would have done anything to win. And I still think you and your brother are guilty as sin."

She wouldn't say this to him in another setting, because here, he is chained by home and family and the knowledge that if he retaliated, he would be caught this time. It's still another mistake; to wave a red flag at a bull like this. Her daddy always told her to stop playing with fire, but she never listened.

He grips his own drink tighter (coffee that smells of bourbon, even from over here, and she never said he wasn't audacious), and gives her that hooded stare.

"Doesn't matter what you think, does it? Neary's dead and can't testify to a damn thing. Trial's over. What do you want?"

The longer she stays, the more she wants to do something like snap his suspenders. See if he ever smiles, or if the scowl will just deepen.

In the end, she hands him her card. "Tell your brother to stay off my radar. And next time you need a lawyer, give me a call. I promise not to leave you sitting in jail overnight."

"Tell him yourself," Eli says, but pockets the card anyway.

His gaze burns on the back of her dress all the way down the street.

~~~

Three weeks later, when she's up to her ass in audit reports for various Atlantic City businesses (and what do you know, the name "Enoch Thompson" keeps coming up), Cliff hands her the telephone.

"It's the sheriff - Thompson's brother."

She takes the call, ignoring the eyes of every man in the office. Let them stare; it's not as if they don't get enough opportunities.

"Esther Randolph."

His voice is quiet - she wonders if he's at home and trying not to wake the kids, or somewhere else and trying not to alert his associates - but clear.

"You got a minute?"

She tries not to smile. She's done enough of these calls to know what he means is _got time for a fuck?_

"Just a minute?"

"More than that. Tell your pet goons I need to talk to you about a possible booze shipment."

"And where would this shipment be arriving, Sheriff Thompson?"

"Christ, I don't know," he grumbles. "Make something up so I can meet you at your place."

"So, if my men were to go down to the old factory on Baltic, they'd find cases of alcohol?"

Eli laughs. "Who the fuck knows what's down there? Could be Houdini, for all we know."

She crosses her legs under her desk and keeps her tone businesslike. She'd like to flirt back, but duty calls for the moment. "I'll appraise them of that possibility. Shall we say 11:30 for a midnight delivery?"

"You're actually gonna send them all the way out there just to see me? Lady, have you got a pair."

"You'd better hope not."

She sends Clifford, the poor sap, off with the rest of the men to Baltic Avenue. He's been hoping to pick their relationship back up ever since the cast came off, but he's a mediocre lawyer and a worse lay, and she's got bigger things to deal with. He whines the entire way out the door, and it takes her another ten minutes with the switchboard girl to sell the lie she's finishing up paperwork.

Driving home has never been so . . . fun.

~~~

Esther likes her men a little dumb and a little dangerous - which could be a problem if she hadn't learned at her daddy's knee (and shotgun, for that matter) how to handle herself. She learned that a woman could be beautiful and do whatever she wanted, but couldn't be smart. If she was smart, she had to be careful. Esther chose smart and careful over society's expectations, and she's never regretted it.

Not when she has ascended to the position of United States Assistant Attorney General.

Some would question why she pursues men who are her inferior - junior counsels and Prohie agents and sheriffs. Esther would tell them that being torn from a pedestal you don't want to be on in the first place is a pretty good reason. Men like Eli, they like when she puts up a fight, and they know they can't cage her. Make her pretty promises of a ring on her finger and a child in her belly like that'll fix all the world's problems. The first time she visited a girl in the hospital whose john beat her bloody, Esther promised herself she'd be careful.

Normally, the fact that her door is open would disturb her, make her reach for the derringer she keeps in her purse, but she can see him pacing the living room. He's already helped himself to some of the ice from her icebox, crunching it between his teeth and probably washed down with whatever he's got in his flask.

(Sometimes she can switch her job off. Sometimes it's not as much as she, or anyone else, would like.)

"Evening," she says, tossing files on her desk and shrugging out of her coat.

He tosses an ice cube in the air and catches it, crunching down. "People don't lock their doors in Washington?"

"I'm not in Washington."

"I'm just saying, a lady alone? I'd be more careful."

She raises an eyebrow. "Are you telling me that the Atlantic City Sheriff's Department isn't on top of crime in this city?"

He sets the glass down, stares hard at her. Esther can feel the low burn in her belly, the way his gaze slides from her heels, up her bare legs, over her sensible skirt and blouse, skates over the drape of cotton over her breasts, and finally to her face. He must like what he sees, because he clears his throat and tugs at his collar.

"We on the same page here?"

Her impulse is to make a smart comment. Tease and smirk, because it's easy, it's comfortable - it's how they got in this situation in the first place. She just couldn't resist winding him up, knowing he was on the other side of the bars and unable to do a damn thing about it.

"I think we are," she says instead, rounding the desk and backing him against it. Settles in with her hands on either side of his hips and her lips to his ear. "I'm on the page where you fuck me over this desk and if you're really, really good, I'll think about round two in bed."

She's on the desk before she can breathe, his hands plucking at the buttons of her blouse and his mouth hot and wet on her neck.


End file.
